


ace, king, queen, dunce

by TittyAlways



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: 226th night, Canon Divergent, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 01:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12400080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TittyAlways/pseuds/TittyAlways
Summary: “What do I look like to you?” Tyki asked, amused, knowing full well Road had only left the most flattering clothes in his wardrobe before that ill-fated mission months before. She tended to burn them if they started looking worse for wear.“A fool,” the boy retorted primly, and Tyki thought he was quite right about that.





	ace, king, queen, dunce

**Author's Note:**

> a request for a 'what if' scenario where tiedoll didn't arrive in time to, uh... save??? allen and johnny??? kidnap them??? lol i rly enjoyed writing this actually; i haven't had much opportunity to write fight sequences before, and even a short one like this was fun to dip into.
> 
> as always, feel free to send in requests!! im still thinking about opening commissions, so this is like a.... free trial period ig LOL get it while its hot pff
> 
> twitter: tittyalways  
> tumblr: titty-now-titty-later/tittyalways  
> discord: TittyAlways#9367

Tyki might have liked to claim he didn’t quite know why he was struck by the urge to touch the boy that had fallen from the rooftops like an angel from heaven, but really there was no one to fool but himself. He wasn’t even certain, really, that it _was_ Allen who he was reaching out to touch.

But then, the Fourteenth wouldn’t have been clinging to that human and crying all over him, even if he _were_ pretending to be the boy.

There was a brief moment, when Tyki’s gloved hand landed in the boy’s down-soft hair, that Tyki might have liked to last for a long, long time. The curious glance Allen gave him, head tilted back to see who that hand belonged to. Cute and sweet and _confused._ As though he could never have expected such a gentle touch to land on him.

“Hm?” Tyki cocked his head and leaned in, gaze curious on the boy’s wide, silver eyes. He didn’t know if they’d ever been this close. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen that look of gentle surprise on his face. “You made it back,” he said simply, and the boy blinked at him.

Tyki blinked back, and the next thing he knew there was a hand fisted in his collar, a sharp heel kicking his legs out from under him, and all the boy’s slight weight and impressive strength was forcing the air from his lungs with how heavily he dropped to the ground. A pitiful groan ground past Tyki’s lips, and he fancied he could already feel deep purple bruises forming across his shoulder blades.

 _“Fuck,”_ he wheezed, letting his eyes fall closed with absolutely no intention of moving for a good minute or so.

The first thing he said - the _first thing he said -_ was a loud, enraged statement of, “You startled me!” like this was a fucking tickle fight or something and he’d just accidentally kicked at Tyki’s ribs, rather than a gentle hand on his head that had left Tyki immobile on the ground.

A little bit dizzy from the blow, Tyki retorted, “The fuck kind of overreaction is _that?”_

 _“Listen!”_ Allen snapped, quick-stepping away from him with the timid man sheltered behind his protective arm. “Don’t come _near_ me!”

“God,” Tyki groaned, letting his eyes fall closed for a long moment, “didn’t the Fourteenth wear you out at _all?”_

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” the boy bristled, whipped a glance over his shoulder to the man behind him before those cold grey eyes of his were back on Tyki. “Did-” he started to say, cut himself off, his brows furrowed with juvenile frustration. Turned his head an inch towards the skinny bespectacled man and kept Tyki pinned to the cobblestones with his gaze while he asked, “What did he do?”

“I, uh.” The man stammered, stopped, hazarded a nervous glance at Tyki from behind Allen’s staying arm. “Sorry I- I wasn’t, I didn’t. I was unconscious, I’m… sorry,” he said, small and meek as a frizzy brown mouse.

Tyki rolled his eyes with a theatrical sigh, exasperated. “Really?” he demanded, dry.

 _“Fine,”_ Allen seethed, facing him properly once more. “What happened?”

“So cold,” Tyki mocked, a taunting smirk curling at the corner of his lips. “Perhaps we should be asking what happened to that polite mouth of yours.” Allen’s glare hardened, and he didn’t say a word. Tyki arched a brow.

“Mikk,” Allen growled, his white arm lifted like a threat.

“A simple ‘please’ would do,” Tyki snorted, still laying on the ground. “But,” he rushed to add when a scowl descended on Allen’s brow like a thunderhead, “really, it was nothing. Or,” he amended, eyes darting to the boy’s bleeding shoulder, “you know. Not much.”

Like pulling teeth, Allen bit out, “And what, exactly, does _not much_ entail?”

“I invited him to dinner,” Tyki said simply, offered a shrug and winced a little when it jostled his bruised shoulders against the stones. “He refused.”

“Not the first time,” Allen muttered, and looked as though he might actually be relaxing a little. Pulling his posture together, stance tall and narrow over Tyki. “Why don’t you just go home already?”

“Yeah, well,” Tyki scoffed, “you’ve both turned me down now, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.” He rolled over to kneel up, a steadying hand pressed to the pavement, and shot an amused glance at the way Allen tensed, the man behind him as nervous as a small rodent. Mouse was really starting to suit him, Tyki decided. “Face like that,” he teased, pushing himself carefully to his feet. “Surely you’ve got your pick.”

The way he jerked his chin in, nose wrinkling in affront, was undeniably cute. He opened his mouth. Closed it. “I’m not in the mood for your-” he paused, bit off what was surely going to be _flirtations,_ and settled on, _“games.”_

“Well,” Tyki laughed lightly, took a short step forwards, “how about you come back with me, then?” he proposed. Cocking his head slightly, he entreated with a sly grin, “We’ll have dinner, and you’ll be able to sleep off that _mood.”_

His expression of unapologetic disgust was less cute. “Not a chance,” Allen said without hesitation, matching Tyki with an equally short step backwards, Mouse scuffing along behind him. “Allow me to rephrase,” he gritted, narrow eyes pinned on Tyki. “I am _never_ going with you.”

“Ohh,” Tyki mocked, taking steps to follow while Allen backed away, their paces equal - Tyki not quite pushing, Allen not quite backing down. “Really, boy. It’s just dinner.”

“It’s not,” he insisted, staunch.

Tyki cocked a brow. “It could be.” The boy scowled and didn’t rise to the bait, cautious in his confusion. “Were I to ask you as a man rather than a Noah. You can bring your pet mouse along, if you like,” he entreated, grinning razor-sharp at the man cowering behind Allen’s shoulder.

“This,” Allen said, expression stormy, “is _not_ how you ask someone on a date, Mikk. I thought even a sticky-fingered bum like you would know.”

Tyki laughed at that, loud and open, and came to a halt, stopping his advances. “What do I look like to you?” he asked, amused, knowing full well Road had only left the most flattering clothes in his wardrobe before that ill-fated mission months before. She tended to burn them if they started looking worse for wear.

“A fool,” the boy retorted primly, taking another few steps back as collateral before he deemed them a safe distance.

Tyki laughed again and shook his head, tucked his hands into the pockets of his coat and let his smile slip into something with a bit of a confusing sentiment. Halfway teasing, a dash of sincerity. “In all seriousness,” he amended, his voice a Mona Lisa cocktail of facetious amusement, and let himself appear as inoffensive as possible, “how are you feeling?”

“Fine?” Allen scowled. “Why do you _care?”_

Tyki righted his head, shifted his feet to stand straight. “What do you mean?”

Allen’s lips tightened as though he wasn’t quite sure what _Tyki_ meant. “I,” he started to say. Pinned a conflicted, deeply confused look on Tyki for a long stretch of seconds before huffing it all out of his chest in an explosive sigh. “I don’t think I even _want_ to know what you’re trying to do anymore.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Tyke remarked, and thought he might understand the offended confusion that had laced the boy’s voice earlier when he’d said the exact same thing.

He sighed and forced his white hand back through his mussed hair, planted it on his hip and landed a reprimanding glare on Tyki. “Seriously?” he demanded, impatient. “Your motives are all over the place. I really don’t get it.”

Tyki had to laugh at that. “Are we really starting this name game again?” he scoffed, halfway genuinely amused. “I think you recall what happened the last time we started pointing fingers over who had their head screwed on right.”

“What’s going on?” Mouse pleaded, almost too quiet for Tyki to catch.

“Oh!” he remarked, blinking his eyes wide in affected surprise. “He speaks!”

Mouse’s (Mice?) eyes went wide too, but more out of panicked fear than anything. Tyki half expected him to squeak. It was all very entertaining. The man was terrified of him. It was hilarious. Tyki let his grin widen, more teeth than fondness, more threat than amusement. Mouse tried to sink into Allen’s shadow.

“Tyki,” Allen spoke, overriding that distraction completely, demanding Tyki turn his attention away from the vulnerable little man behind him with the tone of his voice, the sweet endearment as fake and vapid as the way he said Tyki’s name. “You wouldn’t be inclined to, I don’t know…” He glanced around with a touch of a rueful grin, his shoulders twitching in a shrug when he met Tyki’s unfazed expression, “say the Fourteenth escaped?”

Tyki arched a brow.

“Somehow?”

Tyki blinked. There were a number of things he could say to that. “In a family of thirteen,” he said mildly, watching Allen’s endearing, hopeful smile slip, “of whom I am often made the scapegoat,” he added drily, “even _they_ wouldn’t underestimate me that harshly. And one of them can read minds.”

Allen sighed, and it looked as though that were about the answer he expected.

“But,” Tyki continued, a wry smile twisting onto his lips, “I suppose it’s only polite for me to return the sentiment.” A confused frown flitted across Allen’s brow and Tyki answered his unasked question with, “You wouldn’t be inclined to come along without a fight, would you?”

A small smile sat tense and sarcastic on Allen’s lips. He looked aside without moving his head, as though sharing a derisive glance with his golem, nowhere to be seen. “I have somewhere to be,” he said, eyes a heavy mockery when they fell back to Tyki.

“Paper scissors rock?” Tyki offered, his grin turning sly and a touch savage as he subtly shifted his stance, watched the boy do the same. Black matter seeping from his fingertips, coiling up his forearm like skeletal snakes, Tyki glanced to the boy’s down-white Innocence, soft feathered cloak pooling from his shoulders.

“Don’t be a child, Mikk,” he scolded, lifting that black arm of his, fingers poised like knives, and Tyki was a little bit in love with the competitive egotism in his narrowed eyes, the coiled savagery of his grin. More bared teeth than fondness, indeed, but more than enough amusement to match. “We both know I could cut a paper mache man like you.”

Tyki laughed, settled his weight back on his heels and waited for the boy to come to him. “The lengths your hypocrisy will go-” he started to say, and was forced to take a weighted step back when Allen struck between his words, feather-light on his feet, and quick as ever when Tyki caught his black wrist, delicate and hard as stone, in a black dipped-hand. “Will never cease to amaze me,” he finished with an animalistic grin, already compacting dark matter between his fingers, burning and crushing the boy’s wrist in his grip.

“Funny, coming from you,” he returned, teeth gritted, and twisted in Tyki’s hold, used the weight of his momentum to crack a sharp elbow against his head with that white arm he kept making the mistake of underestimating.

Retreating a couple of steps, shaking his head to displace the discordant clamour in his ears, Tyki rolled his stiff shoulders and widened his stance, lowered his weight, teeth bared in a thrilled snarl. The boy was quick; Tyki would have to be sturdy.

“I wouldn’t say hypocrisy is in my repertoire,” he rebutted, dashed in and caught the white arm of the boy’s defence, wrenching it away from his body with brute strength to force his way through his guard, his other hand reaching for the boy’s throat even as the black claw descended towards Tyki’s back. “Lying,” he gritted, using his height and weight to push through the boy’s balance, “and cheating,” he added, planting his heel on the pavement and kicking the boy’s legs out from under him, slamming him to the ground similar to how he’d done to Tyki earlier. “Certainly,” he finished, already rolling out of reach on his bruised shoulder as a choked gasp tore from the boy’s throat.

His hand on the harsh stone a pivot, Tyki whipped around in a low crouch, arm at the ready, and pinned the boy with his sharp eyes. “But you’d know all about that,” he added, taunted, voice low and rough and suggestive. “Wouldn’t you, boy?”

There was no grace to the way Allen rolled to his hands and knees, but the look he shot Tyki was cut from steel. For how talented he was at hiding himself away, as soon as adrenaline was pumping through his body and and the blood had risen to his cheeks in a heated flush, his intentions were as clear as if they were written across his face.

Tyki watched him dig his toes against the stones, watched the boy launch himself like a bullet towards him, left hand pitched like a trident towards him. Tyki caught that wrist again, twisted on his heels and carried the boy’s momentum over his shoulder. Landed him on his back once more, the breath punched out of him in a short, bitten-off cry.

He took a few steps back, short and quick, gave Allen a moment to collect himself.

The boy took that moment, and then another, sucked a pained breath into his chest before rolling clumsily to his feet. He staggered, stumbled, caught himself and sucked in another steadying breath before he fixed Tyki with a shrewd, narrow glare.

Tyki cocked a brow, didn’t lose his ready stance. “Sure you’re alright, boy?”

“I’m _fine,”_ he spat, ran at Tyki with loose steps.

Tyki caught his wrist again, but Allen had learned from last time. Pulled up, whipped around him like a matador and caught Tyki’s free arm from behind him, landed a kick in the small of Tyki’s back that sent him careening forwards.

Unable to right his balance, Tyki fell with the blow and landed on a rounded shoulder, rolled with the momentum and was back on his feet in a smooth movement turned stiff from the ache of already-forming bruises.

“Why do you _care?”_ Allen bit out, and Tyki didn’t wait for him to make the first move this time.

He darted forwards, tall and heavy, and ducked beneath the boy’s high guard at the last moment. Curled his arms too tight around the boy’s waist and drove a shoulder into his sternum, carried him backwards with the force of his attack until they hit the wall of the narrow alley. Allen cried out something hoarse and weak when his shoulders hit the brick, his head snapping back to crack hard against the wall.

Tyki’s arms grazed bloody across the harsh grout when he tore them away from Allen’s body, scraped his knuckles raw when he grasped the boy’s shoulders and slammed him back from where he’d slumped forwards, head hitting the wall again.

The white hand he curled around Tyki’s wrist was weak, didn’t have nearly the strength Tyki expected from him, and Tyki stepped back with immediate concern when the boy stumbled and slipped sideways, his eyes fluttering dazedly in his desperate fight to keep them open.

“Why,” he choked, tried to suck in a short, winded breath. “Why do you-” he groaned, whined, and dazedly caught himself on his elbow when his legs gave out, gracelessly folding to land in a heavy, crumpled heap on the ground.

“Why do you,” he tried to mumble even as Tyki dropped to a knee beside him, put a hand on his shoulder and carefully pushed him up from his dazed slump.

Concern flaring high in his chest, Tyki pressed the back of his hand to the boy’s overwarm cheek, let the dark matter uncoil from his arms and disappear. “God,” he muttered, moving his hand to the boy’s forehead. “I _told_ you, didn’t I?”

“Stop,” Allen tried to say, tried to push his hands off, tried to shove at Tyki’s shoulder, “stop, just- god, I-”

He slumped again, elbow giving out, and Tyki caught him around the shoulders, righted him and leaned him back against the wall.

“I’m so-” he gasped, blinked dazedly, hand fisted weak and trembling in Tyki’s collar, _“dizzy,_ I-”

“You idiot,” Tyki muttered, something raw and a little bit tender hidden beneath the frustration in his voice. “You stupid, stupid idiot.” He glanced away, twisted his head to scan the ruined alleyway for wherever Mouse had scuttered off to. He found him pressed nervously against the opposite wall, some ten feet away down the road. Shrewd, Tyki eyed his skinny arms and the anxious way he clung to the grout between the brickwork, expression torn with fevered panic.

Yeah, no fucking way he was going to be able to carry this kid.

“Come on,” Tyki said, turned back to Allen. “Come on, come on,” he murmured, curling his arm around the boy’s back and hefting him up onto weak legs, Tyki supporting his weight.

“What,” he tried to say, clutched the back of Tyki’s coat when he stumbled and almost tipped sideways, “what are you- wh- don’t, no, don-”

Tyki caught him, arm tight around the boy’s back, rolled his eyes at his weak protests. “You need rest,” he reprimanded, pulling him to stumble towards Mouse. With a bothered sigh, he huffed, “You complete darling idiot, I _told_ you.” A concerned glance to the boy’s face gave him a confirmation of his sickly white pallor, his dazed eyes. Frown deepening into a severe scowl, Tyki looked up at the nervous man who was doing his absolute best to become one with the wall and he bit out, “You got a room or something nearby?”

The guy was still all but petrified with terror, but it wasn’t amusing anymore so much as annoying. He needed an answer, not a fucking blank stare.

Arching his brows in an ambivalent threat, Tyki prompted, “Unless you want me to take him to the Ark?”

That seemed to jolt him out of it, the fervour overtaking his panic, and he started rambling off, “It’s uh- it’s- the hotel at Belmont Avenue- the, uh, the Vic, the Victory Hotel, it’s um room… Room three-oh-four - it’s, uh, it’s near Caxton-”

“Fuck,” Tyki groaned, “draw me a map, why don’t you? _Come on,”_ he snapped, pointing sharply down the street with a cutting glare levelled at Mouse, _“start walking!_ You’re the one who’s gonna be looking after him, right?” he reminded, tongue scathing, a derisive sneer twisting at his lips.

Mouse jumped, startled, and tried to hunker down between his shoulders, shooting surreptitious glances at Allen, slumped and all but unresponsive in Tyki’s hold, his hand still clutching like a desperate afterthought to the back of Tyki’s coat. “Uh,” he stuttered, stammered, tried to find his words, eyes darting too quick and nervous between the Tyki’s face and Allen’s. “Uh you- you want me to… show you… where to go?”

Tyki, eyes pointed to heaven, muttered under his breath, “I swear it’s like talking to a brick wall.”

When he looked back, Mouse was still just standing there like a fucking mannequin.

Frustration tipping the scales of his already short patience at a weak sound slipping past Allen’s lax lips, Tyki barked, “MOVE, you little rat!” He hefted Allen more securely against his side, caught the boy’s loose hand, Innocence having fallen dormant he was so fucking out of it, and pulled it around his aching neck. “We’ve all got places to be,” he ushered, a stormy glare pinned on the small man.

With a nervous squeak, Mouse turned and scurried along the alleyway, Tyki striding along a step behind, supporting most of Allen’s weight while the boy dragged stumbling feet at his side.

Shooting quick, cautious glances over his shoulder, Mouse’s direction, at least, seemed unerring. Tyki could see the questions written across his face in his bitten lips, anxious eyes, and Tyki felt his lips twist bitterly at the moment his curiosity overcame his fear.

“What, uh,” he started to ask, flinching a little when he caught sight of Tyki’s cold glare, but continued nonetheless. “What did you… _do?_ To him?”

Tyki set his jaw in unimpressed boredom and stared past the forgettable man when he rebutted grudgingly, “I didn’t do _anything._ He just had the Fourteenth abusing his body and destroying his mind for the past half hour or so. What do you _think_ happened to him?”

“Oh,” Mouse said, small and meek. “So… that’s…”

“Painful,” Tyki filled the blank, staring dead ahead, “and exhausting.”

Mouse chewed at his cheek, kept casting Tyki those nervous, curious looks. “You-” he started to say, and Tyki silenced him with a cutting glare. This little man didn’t know the slightest thing about him, and Tyki was quite happy to keep it that way. “Why are you, um.” He shrunk under Tyki’s look, each word more timid than the last, “helping… us…?”

“Him,” Tyki corrected, fixed his hold around Allen, and didn’t say anything else.

“Okay,” Mouse accepted, small and meek and quiet.

The walk wasn’t a long one, and the rest of it passed in tense, nervous silence. Several times Mouse looked as though another question had sprung to the tip of his tongue, but Tyki was glad to find they all seemed to wither and die when he met Tyki’s scathing disparagement. By the time they made it to the hotel, Tyki wouldn’t have been surprised if Mouse had bitten through his tongue, with all the questions he’d forcibly silenced.

Their room was small and dirty. Dust crusted the window frame and the twin beds were rickety hollow steel, narrow mattresses and thin blankets. Tyki carelessly shouldered past Mouse, pushed into the room and gently lowered Allen to sit on the bed.

Past the edge of consciousness, the boy slumped and fell sideways to land against the lumpy pillow, breaths falling heavy and sharp from his loose lips into the rough linen. With a quiet sigh, Tyki stooped and lifted his legs up onto the mattress. Too careful, Too gentle, Tyki pressed his fingers to the boy’s cheek again, laid the back of his hand against his hot forehead.

He pressed his face into the touch, a sigh slipping past his lips so soft it was lost amongst his strained breaths, and Tyki pulled away, refused to let himself linger.

The bathroom was just as dirty as the rest of the cramped suite. Separated from the rest of the room by a concertina door, the sink was green porcelain and the grout of the tiled floor was black with untreated mould. There was a washcloth folded over the edge of that ugly sink and Tyki, with a wry twist of his lips, supposed it would have to do.

There was only one tap, and the water a concerning brown colour for a second before clearing.

He wet the cloth, wrung it out and closed off the faucet, glanced up at the cracked, rusting mirror. Stigmata lined his brow, carved deep into his dark skin, but his hair had fallen loose from the neat tie at some point - likely during his fight with the boy. Curious, Tyki blinked. His reflection mirrored him, as reflections ought to do.

There was something different, though.

He lifted a hand, pulled his long fringe back from his face. Worry pinched his brows, but while uncommon, that was hardly new. The small mole still sat under his eye, where it always had. Tyki let his hair fall back, blinked at his reflection once more.

He eyed his chin, his narrow nose, the set of his eyes behind that messy hair. It was fine, wasn’t it? It was still the same face.

Neah D. Campbell seemed to have a propensity for fucking with people.

With a dry scoff, Tyki picked up the cloth from the edge of the sink, turned his back on the mirror and stalked back into the room.

The boy was still laying where Tyki had settled him, and Mouse was crouched at his bedside. His soft human hand curled around the unnaturally tough Innocence, fingers pressed delicately to the boy’s sweating brow.

Tyki wasn’t quite sure what it was, that resigned pitfall feeling in his chest. Regret, maybe. Envy. Stupid.

Stupid, stupid, _stupid._

_Why are you helping us?_

Because he was an idiot, and it was an idiot’s nature to do stupid, thoughtless things and expect some kind of meaningful result.

Biting it back, swallowing it down, Tyki set his jaw and stepped between the narrow beds. When Mouse glanced up at him, still nervous, shoulders tight, Tyki lifted the damp cloth and dropped it onto his surprised face.

“Let him sleep,” he said, keeping his voice a careful level of resigned ambivalence. Reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Get him some water,” he instructed, eyes on his fingers while he counted out ten pounds, dropped the notes into Mouse’s lap. “He’ll be hungry when he wakes up.”

Numb, caught in confusion and still more than a little shell-shocked, Mouse mumbled blankly, “He’s always hungry.”

Tyki rolled his eyes, already making for the door. “Yeah, well,” he snorted. _Not in my experience._ “He’ll be _more_ hungry.” Allen Walker’s _hunger_ wasn’t his business. Wasn't his privilege to fix. He knew that. He _knew_ that.

His pain wasn’t Tyki’s to abate.

“Wait,” Mouse called, and Tyki did. Cocked his head in an effortless glance, eyes on the end of Allen’s bed as though he couldn’t be assed to actually turn and look at the frizzy little man. “What- what are you, um.” He stammered, wilted, meek. “Will you be fine?” he asked, so quiet, like it even mattered.

Tyki scoffed, amused. Looked ahead and reached for the door. Echoed Allen’s words from earlier with a mocking intonation. “I’ll just say the Fourteenth escaped,” he said, twisting the handle and stepping through. “Somehow.”

He pulled the door closed behind him. Let that be that.

Hesitated out on the landing, reached into his coat to pull out a cigarette and his matches. Lit up in the hall and waited to breathe out a long, steady stream of smoke before stepping off.

_Why are you helping [him]?_

“Because I’m a fool,” he breathed, sighed, descended the creaky hotel stairs, cigarette burning against his lips. “Because I’m a damned fool.”

**Author's Note:**

> for some reason i feel like i need a disclaimer LOL i actually adore johnny so much, small sweet angel boy. tyki's contempt for him does not reflect my own lmfao


End file.
